Due to the convenience provided, credit cards, debit cards, bank cards, store cards, identification cards, reward cards, and/or other types of plastic transaction cards (or cards made of other types of suitable materials) have gained wide acceptance by consumers or cardholders throughout the world. Such transaction cards have been used as an alternative to cash, and some can also be used to initiate and carry out 24-hour banking services. Most conventional transaction cards consist of a rectangular plastic carrier having cardholder identification information and/or account information embossed thereupon. In addition, the card carrier typically includes a magnetic stripe encoded with consumer account information. Examples of consumer account information that are encoded on the magnetic snipe include, but are not limited to, cardholder identification data, account number data, transaction identification number data, and secret identifying code data. In some systems, consumer data stored on the card is encrypted to make counterfeiting more difficult. However, vandals and/or hackers have stolen consumers' sensitive financial data and/or cardholder identification data from magnetic stripe cards, and then have used that data to fabricate counterfeit plastic transaction cards that may be used to make fraudulent purchases.
In order to combat payment card fraud, smart transaction cards (such as “EMV” cards, which stands for “EuroPay,” “MasterCard” and “Visa”) have been developed. The smart transaction cards include electronic circuitry and secure storage devices, and are configured for electronic communications with reader devices. For example, some EMV payment cards include near-field communication (NFC) circuitry which enables a proximity reader device to communicate with the EMV payment card when the EMV payment card is in near the proximity reader without any contact between them. Such smart transaction cards may also be configured to permit the proximity reader to query the smart transaction card for information stored on the smart transaction card, and/or to extract required information to complete a purchase transaction or other activity. However, smart transaction cards have also been prone to instances of information theft and/or identity theft by vandals, hackers or other persons who illicitly utilize a remote card reader or scanner within range of the smart transaction card of an unsuspecting cardholder.
In an attempt to further combat fraud, smart transaction cards incorporating one or more biometric sensors have been developed which purport to enhance security without undesirably hindering the easy use of the smart transaction card by a cardholder. Such smart transaction cards have proven to be somewhat effective against identity theft and payment, debit, and credit card fraud, but require an increase in circuitry and memory space. However, adding memory space to a smart transaction card can be expensive and thus add to the costs of manufacturing smart transaction cards.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide methods and systems for securely storing biometric data and/or other sensitive cardholder data and/or smart transaction card applications on regular memory in a manner that prevents hacker attacks (such as reverse engineering attacks) and/or identity theft and/or payment card fraud at a reasonable cost.